All Shall Perish Suit Continues Against Band’s Wishes

In late April, a lawsuit was filed in Miami on behalf of All Shall Perish by World Digital Rights, a Panamanian company that licenses All Shall Perish’s material.

The suit sought the identities of about 100 IP addresses which World Digital claims illegally downloaded All Shall Perish’s latest album, This Is Where It Ends, through BitTorrent.

Now, a court has granted a motion from World Digital Right, clearing the way for the company to obtain the identities of those 100 alleged online thieves.

A new article claims the band themselves and their manager — all-around nice guy Ryan Downey — continue to have the suit dropped.

“The band’s attorney made it clear to the licensing people [at Nuclear Blast Records] that the band wanted no part in lawsuits against fans,” Downey says.

“The industry is changing, illegal downloading is troublesome for bands and of course, for record labels, but whatever the solution will be — streaming, subscription, Kickstarter, new ways of looking at it entirely, whatever comes about — the band and I are in agreement (as is their lawyer) that SUING MUSIC FANS SURE ISN’T IT,” Downey added.

It also seems that All Shall Perish had no idea their label has licensed their songs to this company.
“The licensing folks at Nuclear Blast in Germany took all of this to mean we wanted them to prevent World Digital Rights from pursuing any new actions [or] claims,” Downey says.

“I don’t know how we could have been more clear, but, we emphasized again, after receiving your email and being made aware of these new developments, that what we were saying all along was DISMISS ANY AND ALL LAWSUITS AGAINST ALL SHALL PERISH FANS.”

This entire situation seems beyond fucked up to me. Ryan and the band are trying to be cool, but have this company they never intended to work with acting on their behalf.

Take it from me, folks — Ryan Downey’s a good dude. There is no way he’d actually allow this to go down, and I respect him from trying to stop this suit from continuing.

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Chris Harris is an internationally-published music journalist and writer whose work has appeared on the pages of Rolling Stone, IFC, Revolver, Alternative Press, and Radar. The former news editor for Noisecreep, Harris also served as co-host for the site’s weekly podcast, “Creep Show." Before that, he spent four years writing for MTV News.